8 Easy n’ Useful Cooking Tips

When you cook often, you get small revelations. Things that make you go “How did I not know that before? It changes everything!”. I thought I’d share some cooking tips with you today. They’re easy tips but important to take your cooking up a notch. Here goes.

To crush spices or seeds, just spread them on a table and rock a pan back and forth on top of them until they are crushed.

For a nice green salad, let the greens dry completely, place them in a big bowl, season with salt and pepper and add the dressing in several steps, tossing in between so that you can coat every leaf and not put too much or too little dressing.

If you’re not watching your sodium intake and you’re making pasta as a free meal, salt the water just as it comes to the boil before cooking your pasta so that it gets seasoned from within while it’s cooking (3/4 Tbsp for 250 g).

When a recipe calls for peeled tomato, you don’t need to go through hell to remove the skin. Just cut an X at the top and let them simmer in hot water for approximately 20 seconds. Let them cool and the skin will come right off.

Invest in a thermometer for your oven. Trust only this thermometer to indicate the temperature of your oven.

I don’t know why exactly, but when a recipe calls for cracking an egg, I like to spread a paper towel on the kitchen counter and break the egg on top of it. No damage done and it all goes straight to the bin!

White vinegar will do miracles. Not only does it remove odors, but it also disinfects surfaces and kills pesticides. We soak our vegetables in water and white vinegar to disinfect them before storage.

And finally, recipes are just here to guide us. We all interpret recipes differently. Don’t be scared to substitute with your version of ingredients and cooking techniques. A simple example is that I never use heavy cream. I prefer my light cooking cream for all the recipes I cook. Sometimes, I even use yogurt instead.